Before I write anything else: The Paris 2011 Pride parade had a wonderful, encouraging spirit, as do all gay pride parades. That everyone should be so lucky to live somewhere where these events can happen.
Watching the parade, I was struck by how relatively few drag queens there were, or even people just wearing something wild. I mean, hell-ooohh, we're in Paris! I was trying to figure out if my comparison between Paris pride and Canadian pride parades was fair, or if my memory was selective. But I honestly think that the events in Toronto in Montreal that I've seen had a higher proportion of, uh, costumes. That's not to say that there weren't great outfits in Paris---there were lots---but there was a hell of a lot of jeans-and-t-shirts going on, even on the floats!
Everyone was still energetic and passionate about being in the parade, though, and it occurred to me that maybe the French take the parade (or "marche") a little more seriously as a protest (or "manifestation") than us North Americans, for whom wild self-expression as itself a protest could be more important. So if North Americans (or at least, Canadians) emphasize a little more the individualist, self-asserting aspect of the parade, the French, true to spirit, lean a bit the other way (so to speak---!) in treating it as a mass movement. For instance, there were a LOT of people behind the Socialist float.
Or maybe Paris Pride is less important as a tourist event than many North American pride parades, and so the political/communal aspect is more prominent...
These guys did not stay up there for long, probably because they realized how much that little roof was buckling...
Yoo-hoo, I'm over here! Look this way!!!
The rainbow flag is fine, but the pink triangle will always be more meaningful to me.
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